Communication (we need therapy)
by Pyrahus
Summary: Marius "Fucking" Pontmercy manages to set everyone off again. He really should just stop. Really. In which Grantaire has a blog called "Be Easy", Enjolras lowers himself to using popular social media, Jehan is endlessly in love with floral layouts and it turns out that all the Amis have their own tumblrs.
1. we'll nip it in the bud

It all began with Marius as such things seemed to do.

They were all sitting peacefully (peacefully by their standards) one Saturday afternoon in Marius's dorm, indulging in some "good bro time" a la Bahorel.  
That specifically meant this:  
Enjolras looked reasonably relaxed as he sat at the kitchen counter, staring down at his notebook and occasionally scribbling down a thing or two.  
Combeferre, as usual, took his place to the right of this friend, reading some workings of Aristotle or another whom he had recently redeveloped an interest in.

Jean and Coufeyrac were sitting on the floor, despite the perfectly good loveseat right beside them, laughing over some story that Bossuet was recalling about his day, regarding an unfortunate incident with a fish and a bus while Joly fretted.  
Feuilly and Bahorel took the couch, totally focused on the television in front of them.

Lastly, Grantaire and Marius sat at the kitchen table, one with his head down in his arms and the other fiddling about on his laptop.

Grantaire looked over blearily at his friend over a dirty dish.  
"What are you up to?"

Marius couldn't stop the flush from creeping up his neck and into the tips of his ears.

"Cosette was talking about this site and I couldn't help but be curious…"

Grantaire snorted.  
"You think everything that comes out of the girl's mouth is pure magic."

Still, he couldn't help but crane his head around to see what was on the screen.

He sucked in a breath at the sight and laughed uproariously, interrupting the rest of the quiet activity in the apartment.

"Tumboner? She told you to get an account on tumboner?"

Enjolras twisted around in his bar seat, eyebrows arched.

"What on earth- Grantaire, the site is called 'tumblr' for God's sake."

Marius stared back at his fearless leader. His fearless leader who hated social media and incessantly made fun of twitter users in passing whenever he could.

"You know what this is?" he finally sputtered, gesturing to the blue and white layout of the screen.

"Of course I do, I have one."

At that, everyone in the room gawped at him.

Enjolras just looked cross.

"What?" he demanded, arms crossed defensively across his chest, "I find it to be a very useful site for spreading awareness about various causes and gives me all the space I need to express myself on important matters."

"And by that, he means he rants and clogs up my dashboard with countless reblogs of inspiring quotes about France and liberty," Combeferre remarked, eyes still focused on the book in front of him.

Bahorel stared at Enjolras in horror.  
"Oh god, you are one of those social justice bloggers aren't you. The ones that flood my dash and cause fights that I'm not even around to punch someone over."

Enjolras managed to look down his nose at Bahorel across the room.  
"Please do not associate my work with _that_."

"Oh, I'll have to follow you all then," Prouvaire beamed.

"You have one as well?" Coufeyrac asked curiously, "I thought that R and I were the only ones. He's a night-blogger though and that shit is weird."

They all looked at Grantaire. He shrugged carelessly.

Feuilly piped up.  
"I run a fuckyeahpoland blog."

"I have one dedicated to the prevention of disease and outbreak." Joly murmured absentmindedly as he dug around his bag looking for his hand sanitizer.

"I broke my theme somehow when I was playing with the html and now I don't know how to fix it." Bossuet looked mournful.

"I'm so confused right now." Marius sighed.

Suddenly the kitchen was a hubbub of activity as they all gathered around to help Marius set up his new blog.

"What URL should I choose?" Marius looked increasingly stressed by all the bodies crowded around his laptop.

"Oh, choose something beautiful!" Jehan sighed dreamily, "Mine is the title of one of my favorite Edith Piaf songs."

"Make it something meaningful,"  
"Yours is 'revolutionishere'" Combeferre sighed to Enjolras, "And I doubt that Marius wants something like that."  
Enjolras looked offended at the idea that anyone would dismiss the chance to make a difference.

"Yours is 'fuckbitchesgetmoney'?" Joly's scandalized voice rose when he stared at Bahorel. The man jerked his head in Combeferre's direction.  
"Hey, at least it's catchy and creative. Combeferre's URL is literally ' .com'".

Marius buried his head in his hands.

Grantaire just grinned maniacally.  
"Don't quit on us now man! You haven't even told us if you want a single or double-column layout! You haven't even written a description or chosen a title for your blog."

Marius contemplated making a mad dash for the door and calculated how many steps he could get in before Bahorel would have gotten him around the knees.  
He was doomed.


	2. when tomorrow comes

Weeks after the "Marius-got-a-tumblr" incident, they had all begun following each other, some more reluctantly than others.

Coufeyrac was constantly annoying the others by post up pictures memes he thought pertained to his friends and tagging them. Enjolras swore if another one of the "College Liberal" pictures with an unfunny punch line, he was going to go over to Coufeyrac's and destroy his collection of Batman comics. Combeferre, however, was secretly amused by the Philosraptor pictures.

Still, the newly discovered blogs did not do much to change their perspective of others. To nobody's surprise, Jehan's blog turned out to be incredibly hipster, filled to the brim with pictures of flowers, quotes from his poet of the week and music of the 30s.

Joly's was particularly organized, posts tagged and organized by degree of severity and contagiousness, writing a new post every week, detailing the horrid consequence of some ailment or another.

Grantaire barely seemed to use it, unless drunk, in which he would write odd posts about snakes and tails and faces.

One day, Enjolras burst into their usual study room on campus, fury written all over this face.

"Who did it," He growled lowly at the room filled with confused people.

"Who did the thing! 7 years dungeon, no parole. " Coufeyrac quipped helpfully.

"Who did what?" Combeferre interrupted smoothly when Enjolras' expression became murderous.

"Who changed my blog title to from 'Will You Join In Our Crusade' to 'Talk Revolution To Me Baby'?" Enjolras shouted, throwing his folder on the table.

Jehan smothered a giggle.

"Who forgot to log out of tumblr on someone else's computer?" Grantaire appeared behind Enjolras in the doorway, a picture of perfect innocence plastered on his face.

"You!" Enjolras sputtered incoherently, "You."

Grantaire looked back coolly.

"Have a sense of humor, Apollo."

"This is serious, Grantaire! I was organizing a rally on that. Now I'll be discredited."

"I actually thought it would make your dry blog more interesting."

At that, Enjolras snapped.

"You've always proven to be selfish and lazy. Just because you care not for changing this world and would rather sit at the sidelines and be a generally unhelpful drunk and cynic, it does not mean you should deliberately sabotage real efforts to make this world a better place. It was better when you wasted your time with a bottle."

The last sentence was muttered under his breathe and even as the words slipped out, the others could see the flash of regret in his eyes.

Grantaire flinched visibly. Over the past year, he had decided to go clean, checking into rehab and asking all of the Amis to give him a hand when he needed it. Hearing that was a slap to the face.

"If Apollo wishes it, then I will return to my fair mistress in glass," he finally muttered, cracking a bitter smile and walking away.

Enjolras sighed, sitting down at the table, ignoring all the stares coming from the rest of the students in the library. Javert, the head of campus security was giving Enjolras the biggest stinkeye of the century and it looked like he was about to march over before Professor Valjean from the Religious Studies department came over with a question.

"Enjolras…" Combeferre looked reproachful.

"He was wrong to do so!" Enjolras snapped.

"I found his real tumblr" Jehan said in a tiny voice. He hated it when they fought.

"Real tumblr?" Enjolras stopped with a frown, recalling a blog filled with ramblings about and a particularly disturbing post about vegetables having tiny voices, speaking to each other and screaming when being cooked and chopped up.

Bossuet tried to lean across the table to peer at Jehan's laptop but instead, managed to slip back on the chair and bang his chin on the table.

When everyone made sure that he was alright (and Joly had ranted about the dangers of biting of one's own tongue) they all returned to peer at Jehan's screen.

Enjolras unconsciously gasped sharply. Page after page, there were posts of beautiful artworks. Some were clearly just photos of a page on a sketchbook, the pencil lines curling delicately across the page, intersecting with other subjects. Others were full paintings, completed and polished works. All of them had a curling R in the bottom right hand corner.

Coufeyrac grinned.

"These are amazing! He's never shared his art with us before."

Jehan turned a deep red.

"I don't think we were meant to find this, so we have to pretend none of us saw this okay?"

With a combination of Jehan's pleading and big watery eyes mixed with Combeferre's disappointed parental look, they extracted promises out of everyone.

That night, Enjolras closed up the essay he was working on and stared at his screen for a moment.

Finally, he carefully opened a new browser window and carefully typed in the URL he had committed to memory earlier that day.

_inpariswithyou_

To his surprise, a new post had been made. It was another one of the rough sketches that often appeared. This particular one featured a figure, silhouetted with a grand flag, a proud tilt to his chin and a confidence to his stance. The shadows of other people around the central figure filled the page from edge to edge.

His eyes slid lower to a line of texts, barely visible with how lightly they were etched on the page.

"_Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me?"_

Taking a deep breathe, he leaned back. Finally he reached for his phone and typed in a few words.

11:46 PM [E sent]: I'm sorry.

11:47 PM [R sent]: I know.

11:48 PM [E sent]: I was unfair. I overreacted.

11:52 PM [R sent]: I know.

11:53 PM [E sent]: Will I see you tomorrow at the meeting?

11:58 PM [R sent]: When have I ever missed one Enjy?

12:01 AM [E sent]: Will you bring a drawing for me?

12:13 AM [R sent]: …. Fuck. I should have put a goddamned password on that blog.

12:14 AM [E sent]: Please, R?

12:15 AM [R sent]: Who am I as a mere mortal to refuse Apollo?

12:16 AM [E sent]: Tomorrow then?

12:17 AM [R sent]: Tomorrow Enj. Tomorrow.


	3. drink with me (please)

"Today's the day."

All of les Amis, (and just les Amis since Marius was on a date with Cosette and no one even had the heart to be annoyed when Cosette looked so happy when Marius picked her up) had created a headquarters in Enjolras' living room (who was also not present and not aware of the war council room that had formed in his own home).

This was primarily due to the fact that Enjolras' living quarters were also Combeferre's living quarters and the man had put his foot down.

"Today is what day?" Grantaire asked sleepily. He had been dragged out of bed by an excitable Courfeyrac for this endeavor, and my word, that man could use his singing as a torture implement.

"I have had enough of going on Bossuet's blog and seeing the strangest layout ever, with words overlapping, posts falling on top of each other and a missing "home" button. And especially the missing "ask" button. And I can not stand his autoplay music which will blast when one is least suspecting it and then continue to glitch throughout."

Feuilly clapped.

"Hear hear! Once I was working on making a intricate fan and his-" (Feuilly took a moment to dramatically point in Bossuet's general direction where the poor fellow was detangling himself from the stool he had tripped over) "-blog suddenly started blasting "GIRL, I WANNA TAKE YOU TO A GAY BAR'. I ripped that paper, and the ribbing of the folding fan that day. I couldn't even turn it off!"

Combeferre looked a little pale.

"How did that song even get onto your blog Bossuet!?"

"I don't know!"

Before everyone else could relate their "Bossuet's blog-related trauma", Combeferre silenced them with an exasperated look.

"Bahorel, you know the most about computers here. I am putting you in charge of the coding. Feuilly, you are assigned to helping him too and resetting the autoplay"

Combeferre looked down on his task list.

"Courfeyrac, Jehan, if you could start browsing through different themes that would best suit Bossuet's uses, that would be wonderful."

Finally, Joly and Bossuet were asked to generally supervise and make any changes to better suit Bossuet.

Grantaire laid on the couch.

"What about me Combeferre?"

Combeferre smiled down on him.

"I thought it would be rather nice if you could draw him a header and a matching icon."

Grantaire gaped up at him. None of les Amis had shown much interest in his art other than Jehan and he never even knew that Combeferre had seen his work other than the silly sketches he filled the margins of their meeting minutes.

"Does everyone know about that fucking blog? For fuck's sake."

Combeferre just raised an eyebrow and walked away.

* * *

With the boys clustered around their own respective computers, productivity was nigh.

After a quick fight over who was allowed to blast music on their laptops, Combeferre instated 15 minute intervals turns where people could play songs as they wished.

Never before had they discovered how varied their musical tastes ranged.

Courfeyrac unrelenting played Lady Gaga every time Combeferre called his name, while Prouvaire confused everyone by choosing songs by Edith Piaf or Charles Trent. Joly was on an American 80s kick while Bossuet's iPod was broken and his turn was skipped. Feuilly had recently acquired a CD of Polish marches he insisted were "the shit" and Combeferre just plugged in his earphones and let the soothing notes of the Moonlight Sonata cover the musical choices of his friends.

When it was Bahorel's turn, the man burst out of his chair with glee, crossing the room to plug his phone to the speakers.

"THEY SEE ME ROLLIN'

THEY HATIN'"

As was his luck, Enjolras burst through the front door right at that moment in time to see Bahorel pelvic thrusting in time to the music. Courfeyrac had covered Prouvaire's eyes with one hand.

All of the residents of his living room turned slowly to peer at their leader, standing in the doorway with an increasingly pinched expression developing. Finally, he slowly backed away and closed the door behind him.

"Oh hell," Combeferre levered himself out of his position on the loveseat, squeezed between the arm of the furniture and the tangled limbs of the Joly-Bossuet duo as they leaned over Coufeyrac and Jehan's shoulders to see the options of themes and layouts they were slowly working through.

He walked to the door and wretched it open, revealing Enjolras sitting on the front step.

"Come in Enjolras."

Enjolras twisted to glare inside.

"What are they all doing here?"

"I asked them to help fix Bossuet's tumblr because I am sick and tired of it's sheer broken quality."

Enjolras eventually sighed and agreed not to kick everyone out.

Surveying the group, frantically typing away at their laptops and arguing with each other, Enjolras stifled a sigh.

_No one is ever this productive and focused when I ask them to make plans for student protests, _Enjolras thought bitterly to himself.

Pulling his own netbook out of his messenger bag, he tried to ignore the yelling that had erupted over in Feuilly and Bahorel's couch.

"I don't know why! The HTML keeps rearranging itself and when I make it conform, the script still apparently codes wrong because the words are invisible whenever someone else opens it their laptop."

"Well, the music won't let me change it for another, nor will it let me delete it."

"What the fuck! Bossuet, did you cast some fucking voodoo shit on your url?"

As the frustration mounted in the room, Combeferre looked more increasingly like a stone statue. Enjolras eventually gave up on reviewing his law case studies. Seeing a familiar tuff of dark curls, he made his way across the living room.

"R."

"Jesus Christ Enjolras, what are you, a fucking assassin? Stop sneaking up on me!" Grantaire jolted in the armchair he was dozing in, his sketchbook crumpled against his cheek and shoulder.

Enjolras just reached over the back of the seat and relieved a half-finished bottle of beer from it's cradle of Grantaire's elbow.

"Enjolras?" Grantaire looked incredulous when, instead of throwing it out, Enjolras took a deep drink.

"I am too sober for this disaster." he replied once he had drained the bottle.

Grantaire still gawped at him.

"Stop that, you look like a cow."

Plucking the sketchbook out of it's place, Enjolras surveyed the page.

It was clear that Grantaire got rather bored of his assigned task and began a new work instead.

He had drawn their company, capturing Jehan's flyaway hairs, Courfeyrac's constantly rumpled collar, Joly's slender hands and Bossuet's patched socks. Combeferre was clearly recognizable with his long limbs, next to the curve of Bahorel's easy grin and Feuilly's band shirt depicting some obscure Polish band or another.

Without saying a word, he handed it back.

"You should post that picture as well," he murmured to Grantaire, as he walked back to his seat.

* * *

To Combeferre's exasperation, the blog never was fixed.

Instead, it now featured clipart of dicks flying across the page whenever one moved their mouse and the neon background was interspersed with a pale pink floral print that caused headaches. The music now cut and paused randomly and each time one thought it was over, it would start playing again.

(somewhere during this conversation, Courfeyrac suggested that they hire and exorcist since "that shit ain't natural, I swear to you".)

Even the most optimistic of the group gave up the cause and told Bossuet to start a live-journal account instead.


End file.
